Let me explain this clearly, because "revision" is a remedy many clients have encountered without fully understanding what it does and — crucially — how it differs from an appeal. A criminal revision petition is a request to a higher court to examine whether a specific order passed by a lower court was legally correct, within its jurisdiction, and procedurally proper. It is provided under Section 438 of the BNSS (the old Section 397 CrPC), with the Patna High Court's revisional powers set out in Section 442 BNSS (formerly Section 401 CrPC).

The fundamental distinction between a revision and an appeal is this: an appeal is a broad re-hearing in which the appellate court re-examines the full evidence and the law and can substitute its own conclusion on both fact and law. A revision is narrower and discretionary — the revisional court examines the order for patent illegality, a jurisdictional error, or a manifestly improper or perverse decision, rather than re-arguing the case as a whole. The revisional court can call for the lower court's record, hear the parties, and set aside, modify, or correct the impugned order — but it will not ordinarily re-weigh evidence as an appellate court would. Courts in Patna apply this distinction strictly.

Revision is used most often in Patna practice where a statutory appeal does not lie against a particular order — for example, against certain interlocutory or intermediate orders, against an order framing charges, against a Magistrate order that does not directly attract an appeal right, or against a Sessions Court order in a revision that then comes to the Patna High Court. Procedural features to be aware of: limitation is generally ninety days from the impugned order; there is a bar on a second revision — if you lose a revision before the Sessions Court, you cannot file another revision to the Patna High Court on the same order (instead, the High Court's inherent powers under Section 528 BNSS would be invoked); and where the trial is ongoing, your counsel should seek a stay of trial proceedings when filing the revision so the matter does not advance while the revision is heard. The criminal advocates at the Patna panel of Aapka Legal Advice can assess whether the specific order in your case has the kind of legal infirmity that justifies a revision and draft it to target that infirmity precisely.